


Waiting for the Future

by Callmesalticidae



Series: Portraits from the Revolution [1]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Alternate Universe, Art & Philosophy, Other, Post-Canon, Qualia - Freeform, Worldbuilding, Yeerk Culture, Yeerk meditations on human psychology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-07 15:18:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3176698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callmesalticidae/pseuds/Callmesalticidae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Yan 314. You are a Yeerk. And today is the greatest day of your life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I. A Study in Green, No. 12

Your name is Yan 314. You are a Yeerk. And today is the greatest day of your life.

They are showcasing some of your work at a New York City art gallery, and this is your biggest event yet. Fifty-two works in total, and not a one of them in which you are ashamed. You doubt that you will be returning home with the majority of them when the week is out, and this brings you as much happiness as anything else.

You walk back and forth, observing the guests as they observe your paintings. One man in particular has been paying close attention to your  _Study in Green_ series and you have, in turn, been paying close attention to him. As he comes to the end, a painting titled  _No. 12_ , you make your approach. You are well aware that he will have questions, and you will make yourself conveniently available for answering of them.

He seems to have expected your coming and addresses you without fanfare. "This is a very interesting series," he says. "Twelve paintings and… all that you're using is  _green_. It reminds me of Jackson Pollock in a way, a sort of monochrome Jackson Pollock."

"Thank you," you say. "And like Pollock, it may interest you to know, I also work with my canvas on the floor. As he put it, 'I feel nearer, more a part of the painting.' I am, as he said, almost  _in_ the painting, and this suits my mission well."

"Your mission." He takes another look at the painting. "These are all a lot of shades, but I can hardly tell them apart. And there is motion, there is some kind of pattern here, but for the life of me I can't tell if I'm supposed to recognize it or just feel it."

"A Yeerk would find these paintings easy enough to translate as soon as they were informed of the nature of the piece. You see, these are meant to represent, in a fashion that humans may perceive, what it is like to be a Yeerk.  _No. 12_  in particular is a single stage in a five-member dance."

The man turns back to you, surprise evident on his face. "You have dances?"

"Of course. They are three-dimensional performances, done as they are in the pools, and they are perceived not by sight but by touch and by sonar. We have been separated from much of our culture— the circumstances of the war made it easy for our leaders to control the transmission of information— but this is something that remains. All of these paintings record not just the What-It-Is-To-Be of a Yeerk, but a piece of our cultural heritage."

"And what about making it all green?"

"It must look dull, no? So many shades of the same color, you must be thinking. Why not add a little bit of blue, or some red?"

"I don't mean to criticize your vision, but… Yes. Why not?"

"You may consider this a critique on your species if you would like. That is how several people have taken it thus far, and they seem to have appreciated it. My present host says that my work has taught him to see the world with new eyes."

"Your host? And he doesn't get to talk for himself, does he?" The man's eyes narrow a little bit.

"Peter prefers for me to handle these events on his own. He says that this is my day, not his. I could interrupt him if you'd like, but he's composing an article in his head right now— he dabbles in scientific journalism, among other things— and might not appreciate the interruption. Off in his own world, as you might say."

"Interesting. And you were saying about the colors?"

"You must understand that where you see the same color over and over again, and may even have difficulty in distinguishing some of the shades, a Yeerk sees so much more variety in these paintings. My favorite color, as it were, is not just green but a very particular shade of it. As the Russians distinguish  _temno-siniy_  from dark blue, and you distinguish pink from red, so do we think of these as all being expressions of their own… being. We are not accustomed to these things and so, I beg your pardon if I offend, we do not take them for granted. This is why Yeerk painters often experiment first with Abstract before they move on to other styles."

The man returns his gaze to the painting, and you can tell that he is looking upon it with new eyes. "Is that the point of your  _Primary Colors_  piece at the beginning too?"

"Exactly. I know that it must look boring to many humans, but for a Yeerk it is still  _color_. If you are not already familiar then you must go sometime and see Kazimir Malevich's  _Black Square._ Now there was a human who could appreciate the majesty of a single color. Which was actually the whole point of  _Primary Colors_ — there is no sensory data to translate in three blocks of solid color, I assure you. That piece was from before I decided to move on to my work in  _A Study in Green_."

"Which is a study, among other things, in how humans don't appreciate their gifts well enough," he says. "And then we also get a glimpse of another sense beyond our ken, in the bargain. What are you trying to do here?" he asks again after a long pause. "If you don't mind my asking."

"I take it that you are not asking simply about a need for creative expression."

"No. I know that you don't get to lollygag in your bodies. I've only met a few Yeerks, but all of them have been the busiest bees I have ever met. So what are you  _really_ aiming at with these paintings?"

"My mission is to bring honor to the Düsseldorf Pool, from which I hail. The money that I make is sent back to the Pool in order to make it possible for other Yeerks to make use of the same opportunity that I have had."

"You don't keep any for yourself?"

"Circumstances have made us all Communists of a sort, sir. Or Communalists, if you would, to avoid comparisons to the Soviet Regime. The funds from the Cassie Taylor Foundation— remembered be her name— were distributed to pools, not individuals. As these funds were— and still are— limited, the pools decided to treat them as investments. Yeerks such as myself are expected to make good on that investment. We must be free as a people, or not at all."

"Being in the pools is slavery?"

"Imprisonment. By nature, you understand, not by any people or species."

"Interesting. And you— do art."

"Indeed. We are charged not only to make money for our pools, but to do so in a way that brings your people and mine together. Many of us are engaged in therapy, but Esplin Three-Nine-Nine of the Essen Pool is one of the best. And Jin Two-Four-Two-Three of the Mannheim Pool settles disputes as only a Yeerk can, by temporarily inhabiting each party in the conflict and seeing them as they see themselves, instantly cutting through years of misconceptions and the inherent limitations of communication through language."

"All you've mentioned are German names. Aren't there some other pools? I thought there was one in San Francisco."

"Indeed, but Germany has been the most understanding of our situation, and the greatest concentration of our pools are located there. The Germans are not unfamiliar with the weight of collective guilt. It was perhaps inevitable for us to find kindred spirits in each other.  _Deutschland ist die Hoffnung meines Volkes_. Germany is the hope of my people," you continue, providing a translation. "They are our guiding call, proof that we might not only be forgiven but that we might be worthy of forgiveness. They are proof that it can be done."

"That's part of your work too, isn't? Making up for what the Empire did."

"Indeed. We are all ambassadors, every one of us that is taken from the pool."

And some of you are more than ambassadors. The war left your people with more needs than securing peace. This, too, is your mission.


	2. II. Bach from the Pools

Someone said to you once that true art was a fundamentally erotic affair, born from the sex impulse and an expression of the same. This someone then went on to theorize that the vast majority of human activities were in some way sexual manifestations. It was an interesting idea, and despite your investigation into human sexuality, from Freud to sleazy romance paperbacks to the most cutting-edge journals, you haven’t been able to settle it in your mind one way or another. About the only thing you know for sure is that it gets boring, quick. You have to do your research a little at a time.

What you can declare conclusively is that the reproductive impulse, whatever its particulars, is different for your kind. Sex, as it were, is death, and not just in the way that the French describe it, as _la petite mort_ , the little death. The dissolution of yourself and raw act of creation approaches such levels as to cease being metaphor and become entirely literal. Like Peter you can only dream of such a thing, but the difference is that one day you might experience it for yourself.

But if the human was right, and art is sex, then in your art you are dancing along the edge of death and tasting it even as you are brimming full with life. As you were operating on this theory you tried to see if you couldn’t merge the two treatments of art together. _Bach from the Pools_ was another painting that was done on the floor, and this is important, because in these paintings you try to convey through human senses what it is like to “see” as a Yeerk.

You feel that engaging in painting as Jackson Pollock did, walking around and through the canvas, is a necessary component of this process. It is as close as you can get to that feeling of being-in-the-midst which comes from Yeerk sonar, which is three-dimensional in a way that vision can only try to be. The process of painting _Bach from the Pools_ was almost a dance, exulting in the sensation of physical movement, merging the two worlds. You thought for this reason that it might be proper to do the work in the nude, trying to shed whatever barriers humans had set up according to their sense of sexuality, and you wonder if they can feel that in the painting.

There is a woman standing beside it now. She had almost left a few minutes before, passing by quickly as she had done with so many of your other paintings, but then something caught her attention. You are not sure what it was, you believe it to have been the title, but whatever it was she was apparently compelled to stay.

Seeing no others that must be dealt with, you decide to approach her. “Do you like what you see? The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be carrying this one off when we close up. Technically, it is already theirs, and I am just borrowing it back to make a complete display.”

“Bach. _Bach_ ,” she says. “How dare— What is your _point_ in creating this? It doesn’t even mean anything,” she says in a tone that’s more nasty than critical. “Do you really have to stealing our names too? This doesn’t even mean anything,” she repeats.

“I beg your pardon,” you say carefully, “but the name is of the utmost relevance. Both Yeerks and humans can perceive Bach, for sense by sonar is nothing less than a kind of hearing. Sonar impresses upon us additional qualia, however. This painting is attempt to render into shape and color a live performance of Bach’s _Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme_ , as experienced with only my natural senses, without the intercession of a host.”

 _Awake, calls the voice to us_ : The selection was no idle choice. But you doubt that the woman cares anything for that. Already her disgust is becoming more apparent.

“So this is what being a traitor to your species looks like, eh? And it was more bastards like you that were playing the song, too, I’ll bet. Not enough to just steal our bodies, you’re letting them take our history too.”

“I beg your pardon—”

“ _Shut up_ , slug. I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to the whore that sold his body to be your meat puppet.”

Peter had already been jolted out of his thoughts a few seconds before. You hand off the reigns, and the voice of your body noticeably changes as speaks in the accent to which _he_ is accustomed. “Excuse me? You come in here, to a classy place like this, and start calling me a whore? You’ve got a lot of nerve to have an idea like that.”

Peter keeps his voice low to go unheard by the others, but a discreet hand gesture tells the security guards nearby to keep an eye on the three of you.

“What would you call it? The only difference between you and the hookers walking the street is that the sex just lasts for an hour. You give it up for three days.”

“I call it a timeshare, lady. Or being on retainer, maybe. You get paid minimum wage to bag groceries at the supermarket, and I make bank to walk around and listen to Yan Three-One-Four as she has to deal with idiots like you.”

“ _She?_ That’s a fucking slug, what you’ve got in your head! Or is that how you do it— is that what you do at night? I’ll bet you call yourselves married, too, some sort of sick trophy husband.”

Ah. Sex again. Someone told you that it was really about experiencing spiritual intimacy. You weren’t sure what that meant at first but someone explained it to you as being a mental phenomenon, in this case a sense and perhaps actual experience of unity with someone. That was another concept you were able to translate into art— sometimes you wonder if maybe sex is just something that humans do when they lack artistic abilities.

If spiritual intimacy were the reason for sex, and such terms _are_ usually bandied about when the topic is brought up, then you understand the desire by some Yeerk-host pairs to be recognized as “married.” Intellectually, anyway. Having not yet experienced the reproductive urge for yourself it is not surprising that you would lack the drive for such complete “oneness” as some Yeerks apparently desire— and as _you_ will achieve not just mentally but also physically when you finally do reproduce.

“While I’m tempted to do that just to spite you,” Peter says, “I’m afraid that ours is a purely professional relationship. The Düsseldorf Pool is paying me to be Yan Three-One-Four’s host. And then I’m reserved for Indra Two-Nine-Double-One from the Milwaukee Pool, and Charlie Two-Zero-One after that.”

“ _Charlie?_ ” She looks about ready to explode.

“Sure. Some of them are taking human names now. Part of the cultural exchange thing, you know?” Indeed. And while it is probably hypocritical to object to it, you can’t help but feel as though there’s something wrong with names like that. Adapting German culture, you can understand. You have done a little bit of that yourself. But what can the Americans or the English offer to your people? The Germans are kin of a sort, and drawing on their wealth is but an acknowledgment of the lesson that they have to teach your people. They are a special case.

She starts to make a scene, but the human herd instinct apparently does its job when she notices that other people are starting to look at her, and not in an approving way. You are not sure why they disapprove, if it speaks more of their opinions about you or simply the institution they are in, but you decide to go with the former, to “give the benefit of the doubt” as humans say, which turns even this incident into a happy memory.

As happy as it is, however, it forces to remember why there is such need for ambassadors like yourself. The Cassie Taylor Foundation— remembered be her name— and similar organizations secured your right to self-determination as basic sapient beings but some people are still pushing for legislation that would force you all to become _nothlits_. Some countries, Germany among them, have granted you citizenship, but not all your people could flee to these places and, anyway, there is always a chance that even they might succumb to fear-mongering.

You will not allow your people to be forced into shapes that they did not choose for themselves. That is not liberation either, and even more than the loss of your freedom it would mean the death of your culture. The What-It-Is-Like-To-Be of a Yeerk is as essential to your people as any other, and to force them into bodies of another nature would annihilate their culture as surely as forcing humans into Yeerk bodies would annihilate theirs. You may have only a handful of dust at the moment, but the whole future of your people will be snuffed out if they cannot retain their essence.


	3. III. The First Life of Aftran 942

You are passing by a woman and her young daughter, paying them no more heed than any other human in the gallery, when the latter one pulls on your sleeve. Pointing to the painting in front of her, she asks, “Did you make this?”

“Indeed.”

The image is swirling greens on a white background, drawn “in the midst” as with many of your paintings, but fully clothed. You do not know if it has any effect, just as you do not know if your nude painting of _Bach from the Pool_ conveyed some undertone of sexuality that is hopelessly invisible to a Yeerk like yourself, but you wished to _remove_ the humanity of the piece as much as possible. You wore several layers of clothing, as if insulating your body against the painting, keeping it from coming out.

You have done many paintings, all of them for both humans and Yeerks. All except this one, which was painted for your people alone.

“It is a painting of Aftran Nine-Four-Two— remembered be her name,” you tell the little girl. “She was the founder of the Yeerk Peace Movement, which wanted to live in peace with humans. This is the Third Way, which she was shown by Cassie Taylor— remembered be her name.”

“She was one of the Animorphs, right?”

“Indeed.”

“And all that swirly streaky bubble green is her,” the girl says as she looks again at the painting. It doesn’t sound like a question to you, so you don’t respond. Instead you follow her gaze to the painting, and meditate on it yourself.

Your people have been robbed of many things, but the greatest theft perpetuated against them was by their own leaders. You have no culture save that which the Council of Thirteen saw fit to hand down. You have some idea how much is authentic, but no one can begin to guess at how much was lost. The dance depicted in _No. 12_ is said to be centuries old, but there are only a few like it. And yet there must have been more— other dances, and songs and stories and more, which were deemed objectionable by the Council of Thirteen.

Some are calling for a Revival. And yes, there are traditions to be brought back, which were left by the wayside but nevertheless survived. Some are calling for a Renaissance. And truly, there is much to be discovered on the homeworld, where the majority of your species still exists. But how well can they be said to be your _people_? You were robbed of your culture and in so doing a new identity was forced upon you.

You are not Yeerks of the homeworld. You are Yeerks of _Earth_ , and your tripartite parents are no longer the celestial bodies of the homeworld, but the star of _this_ world, and Aftran Nine-Four-Two and Cassie Taylor— remembered be their names. Your culture cannot simply be reclaimed from the homeworld, no more than the Americans may look back to the many homelands of their ancestors in order to find their way.

Not for you the reconstruction or the restoration. The revolution is your gospel, the transformation and the second life, and your paintings are the preaching of it. The art that you make is not the art of the homeworld, nor of Earth, but something new, and both their style and their message is the new culture. The Germans had Nietzsche, and then they had the Nazis. Your people have had their Nazis; now they shall have their Nietzsche.

“For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?” you whisper to yourself, repeating the words of one of their sages. “I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.”

This painting is not a painting that is intended for humans, but for Yeerks looking through human eyes. Many Yeerks, you have found, are prone to believing that the human mode of perceiving the world is somehow more real or accurate than a Yeerk’s. They forget themselves, and come to see themselves as the gray slugs that vision makes them out to be. 

You wish for your siblings to perceive themselves as they did before they had eyes with which to see.

“Why is it called _First Life_?” she asks without warning.

“In the days of the war,” you answer readily, “Aftran Nine-Four-Two— remembered be her name— was discovered as a traitor to the Empire. She was rescued, but left without access to Kandrona. She would have died, but Cassie Taylor— remembered be her name— offered her the use of the Escafil Device. She chose the form of a whale, of course, which has senses like those of a Yeerk, and inhabits a similar environment. We were even able to communicate with her, somewhat, without the intercession of host bodies. I am calling this her second life, and so this is a portrait of her when she had the body of a Yeerk.”

“That sounds nice! Could I meet her someday? Where does she live?”

“Ah. She… Whales travel a lot, you know. You wouldn’t pin it down to an exact location.”

Mainly because she’s dead, for reasons that have made your people less than fond of a certain island country in the Caribbean. Perhaps the only good thing that came of it was an acceleration of the moratorium on whaling and the extension of various rights by default to cetaceans, on the grounds that at least some of these animals were provably sapient beings, and that Aftran 942’s case was proof that blanket laws were needed to protect them. Some objected that the laws should only apply to said sapient cetaceans, but it was pointed out that it would be impossible to tell the difference when you were looking at a corpse.

But you’re not going to get into that with a child. Best let her keep her good mem—

“She looks pretty.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Aftran…” The girl looks at the title again. “Aftran Nine-Four-Two looks pretty. Do all Yeerks really look like that?”

“Not with human eyes.”

“Then I wish that I had Yeerk eyes!”

“We, er, don’t have eyes. We sense the world through so— through hearing it.”

“Oh, like this?” The girl closes her eyes and begins to make a little circle around her position. “I’m hearing you with my mind!”

“Right. Something like that.” You can hear Peter laughing internally. You are somewhat grateful to her mother shushes her, but offer the socially-mandatory “No, no, she wasn’t any problem at all” as soon as she is safely quieted.

“There is the future,” you say to yourself as the child leaves, and you can feel Peter’s agreement. What you hoped to show your people, a human child had seen.

You have glimpsed the future, the child and those like her.


End file.
